Season 1 Episode 3
On this episode of All Things Grinnell, we talk with speakers from this year’s Rosenfield Symposium. The Off the Field Symposium explored the inextricable relationship of sports and politics, economics, and society. First we talk with Juliet Macur, the Sports of the Times columnist for the New York Times, about her experience covering stories that transcend the field of sports, such as workplace harassment, sex abuse, brain trauma, doping and international corruption. Macur has recently written stories on sexual abuse in USA gymnastics. Some of the other pieces mentioned in the episode include a story on suicides, drug addiction, and high school football, as well as an article about Ryan Hoffman, a former college football player who suffered from mental illness and probable Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
Then, we talk with Louis Moore, associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University, about athlete activism – past, present and future. He specializes in sports, gender, and African-American history, often overlapping those interests. In the past year he published two books, We Will Win the Day, about the civil rights movement and the black athlete's quest for equality, and I Fight For a Living, about boxing and the battle for black manhood. We focus on the NFL protests started by Colin Kaepernick and look to history for an understanding of the public reaction to athlete activism.